County upholds staff on Live Local Act appeal, denying developer's bid to apply statute to AU-zoned Merritt Island site

The Brevard County Board of County Commissioners unanimously voted to affirm a zoning official's April 22, 2026 determination that the Live Local Act does not apply to an 11.24-acre AU-zoned Merritt Island parcel owned by MeritBidCo SPV LLC.

The appeal centered on whether the county must treat property with a historic conditional use permit (CUP) as "zoned for commercial" under the Live Local Act, which requires counties to authorize multifamily and mixed-use residential in areas zoned commercial, industrial or mixed use. Kim Rozanka, representing MeritBidCo, argued the AU zoning permits specific commercial uses and that a 1983 CUP allowing clinic and hospital use should qualify the site for administrative multifamily approval under the statute. "The CUP already exists," Rozanka said, adding the board should correct what she called a zoning-code problem rather than deny Live Local application.

County staff and the board's counsel framed the legal question narrowly: whether AU is in practice "zoned for commercial" uses as the statute contemplates or whether the 1983 CUP is a nonconforming use that does not change the underlying zoning classification. Staff noted AU is listed among the county's residential classifications with large minimum lot sizes and explained that conditional uses, by their nature, are not uses allowed by right. "A nonconforming use is not part of its zoning," staff said during the presentation.

Residents and neighborhood representatives urged the board to protect local zoning and reject the appeal. Leon Kindred, a Merritt Island resident, told the board that a CUP does not convert agricultural land into commercial zoning: "Please don't let a developer twist an old unexercised medical permit into a zoning change," he said. Multiple speakers warned that accepting the developer's argument would allow old permits to be used as a countywide bypass to build high-density housing in agricultural areas.

After legal discussion and public comment, a commissioner moved to affirm the zoning official's interpretation. The motion was seconded and carried unanimously, leaving the zoning official's April 22 determination intact and denying MeritBidCo's appeal. The board did not adopt any code change; staff and commissioners noted that correcting AU zoning definitions would be a separate policy action if the county chooses to pursue it.

The hearing focused on statutory interpretation and county code language; neither rezoning requests nor site infrastructure capacity were decided at the meeting. The board directed no immediate change to the property's status and left any broader zoning-code amendments to a future process.